Sunday, 4 October 2009

Doom

A motion-sickness baiting gallop, surfaces crawling with prickle-shock detailing, and enemies that crumble into evacuated heaps. This is Doom. Played in such close proximity to Wolfenstein3D, Doom feels like a show-off remake of id's previous effort. Unlike Wolfenstein's passive architecture, Doom's landscapes are teeming with scaling, clashing textures. To eyes since trained to expect an unobnoxious glide, Doom can be a disorientating, untrackable experience. Rather than hamper Doom, this mismatch heightens the game's core narrative text: invasion. Hell has literally vomited itself over this Martian technopolis, warping it in ways we can't quite understand. Enemy types augment this experience - corrupted reflection Marines that devolve into brutish, animalistic shapes, and abstract utilitarian gore-cobbles. Little wonder it became the blueprint for an emerging genre.